Album Review

Getting all the minor complaints out of the way, Kavinsky's 2013 album Outrun is a limited listen with a handful of highlights that were made available previously, but such is life for the fast and futuristic. The grand concept here isn't that grand after all, as French house producer Vincent Belorgay's project/character Kavinsky crashed his Testarossa in 1986, and then reappeared as a zombie in 2006 in order to make electro and show off his racing skills in animé-like videos. Apparently, Giorgio Moroder, Sega video game soundtracks, and the original TRON soundtrack were all the cassettes available to the pre-zombie Kavinsky. Outrun — named after Sega's Golden Joystick Award-winning game which just happened to feature a Ferrari Testarossa — is filled with the bleeps and tempos one might find in an '80s B-grade action film where macho and mullets still thrill the ladies, and guitar solos are thrown on top when a little extra scream is needed. The Daft Punk-deep punch of the bass and the Justice-like thwak of the snares give away that this is post-millennium and designed for modern woofers, plus when a woozy Havoc shows up for some cloud-based rapping on "Suburbia," it's Mobb Deep starring in Miami Vice thanks to a wonderful time machine mix-up. Still, the main reasons to drop a quarter into this video game on wax (or digital download) are the sexy robot song "Nightcall" (which was featured prominently in the film Drive), the dubsteppy victory theme "Protovision," and the assurance that no matter what cool bits of the present are employed, the fetishizing of that 16-bit swagger will remain solid and inspired. Mario brothers might find it tiresome and cheeseball, but bad dudes, street fighters, and metal gearheads will think of it as their dream soundtrack.

Customer Reviews

All or nothing.

by
codevinsky

I'm a software developer and I wear headphones all day every day. You haven't heard this album until it's 2am, your cans are thumping, you're on a caffeine high, and you've just got one more bug to fix.

This album is -perfect-. You're a fool if you buy just single tracks from it. Listen to it all the way through.

There is something inside you

by
Ggfdhauxr FCC

It boy is it hard to explain, fell in love with Nightcall from the movie Drive. So i listened to this album, and it is great!

Did he even bother to mix this?

by
Boomerang Slash

If there was ever a whipping boy for how dynamic range compression can ruin an album, boy is this ever it. The drums are flat, the synths are shrill, the guitars are tinny... the sound quality on Outrun is truly awful. It's the equivalent of making a club sandwich and then smashing it in a hydraulic press. Everything is so boisterously showed down the middle that there seems to be little need for the recording to even be in stereo. How was this allowed to happen to such potentially great music? What a travesty.